What Is Xbox XP? Microsoft's New Movie, Merch and Theme Park Division Explained

On Thursday, Xbox announced something I didn't expect to feel hopeful about: a new division called XP, short for "experience points," built to take Xbox games into movies, TV, merchandise, live events and brand partnerships. The person running it, Kayleen Walters, was an executive producer of A Minecraft Movie, so this isn't a vague memo with a clever acronym. It's a bet with a name attached.

After reading everything Xbox published and the coverage around it, here's where I land: I think XP is smart, and I think it's risky for one very specific reason. It arrived in a year when Xbox has been cutting jobs and divesting studios. If XP becomes what Xbox does instead of making great games, it fails. If it becomes the reason more people care about great games, it could be the best idea Xbox has had in years.

What Xbox XP actually is

XP is a new division inside Xbox focused on how people experience its franchises beyond the games themselves. Sharma's email says it formalizes four areas of investment, and Matthew Ball, Xbox's chief strategy officer, described the aim in an Xbox Wire post: grow games into enduring franchises and make Xbox the number one entertainment company in the world.

The timing tells you how it fits. Earlier in the week Sharma had walked staff through her "four Cs": Core, Content, Creation and Connection. XP and the Mojang change are the Creator and Connection half of that plan, according to her email.

Walters is the face of it. She spent 13 years at Lucasfilm helping steer Star Wars across films, products and partnerships, then ran Mojang, where Sharma says she grew consumer products into a multibillion-dollar business with more than 250 licensees. Her replacement at Mojang, Maria Angelidou-Smith, comes from the community-platform world: Facebook Groups at Meta, then Chief Product Officer at Reddit. That's an unusual pick for a game studio, and Sharma says Mojang's game team already knows Minecraft deeply, so the job is community and product at scale.

One line from Xbox deserves to be taken at its word. In a statement reported by GamesBeat, Xbox said XP "is not a production company." Hollywood studios still make the movies. XP picks the partners and guards the franchise.

The four doors, and what I think of each

Each team is a different way into a franchise. Here's what Xbox says, then my read.

The receipts Xbox brought

Xbox didn't announce XP empty-handed. It put numbers next to the announcement, and they're good:

I believe these numbers. I also notice what they have in common: every one comes from a franchise that already won. That doesn't make them wrong, it makes them the highlight reel. The real test of XP is whether it can repeat the trick with a franchise that isn't Minecraft or Fallout.

Xbox has tried this before

Anyone who followed Xbox a decade ago will feel a flicker of déjà vu, and GamesBeat's Dean Takahashi says as much. Here's the short version of the road to XP:

• 2012Microsoft creates Xbox Entertainment Studios, which GamesBeat describes as ending in failure and Hollywood layoffs. It also included an abandoned Halo project tied to Steven Spielberg, per GamesBeat.
• 2014The studio closes, per Thurrott, shortly after Phil Spencer takes over Xbox.
• 2024Fallout arrives on Prime Video to strong results, while Halo ends on Paramount+ after two seasons. Same company, opposite outcomes.
• 2025A Minecraft Movie opens to the biggest opening weekend ever for a video game adaptation, per Ball, and becomes 2025's biggest film in the U.S., per Sharma.
• 2026Sharma succeeds Spencer in February. Layoffs begin in June. On Oct. 8, XP is announced.
• Oct. 19Angelidou-Smith starts at Mojang.

The difference this time, as I read it, is that Xbox is no longer trying to be the studio. It's trying to be the landlord who picks good tenants. That's a smaller ambition than 2012's, and I mean that as a compliment.

Here's what Xbox listed as already in motion when it announced XP:

• In production
  Minecraft SquaredThe sequel to A Minecraft Movie, with Walters a producer.
• Confirmed
  Fallout Season 3The Prime Video series continues. I found no release date in the sources I read.
• Announced
  Call of Duty moviePeter Berg and Taylor Sheridan are attached, per Deadline's 2025 report.
• Announced
  Diablo animated seriesA Netflix project announced at BlizzCon.
• Part of a deal
  PhysintFilm and TV rights are included in Xbox's partnership with Hideo Kojima. Our Physint story has the background.

My confidence ranking of Xbox's screen bets

This is my opinion, not Xbox's. I ranked each project by how much I trust it to work, based only on what's been announced.

• 1
  MinecraftSequel in production · theme park in 2027It already worked, so the question isn't whether, it's how not to wear it out. Minecraft's strength is that everyone brings their own version to it. The best adaptation leaves room for that.
• 2
  FalloutSeason 3 confirmedXbox says Game Pass hours jumped fivefold during Season 1. That's the dream loop: a show sends viewers to the games, and the games feed the show.
• 3
  Diablo animated seriesAnnounced with NetflixAnimation can go as dark as Diablo needs without a live-action budget, and 12.5 million BlizzCon viewers say the fans will show up. Good fit. I'm waiting to see the creative team.
• 4
  PhysintFilm and TV rights part of the dealInteresting and early. Rights are easy to sign and hard to honor, and there's nothing here I can judge yet.
• 5
  Call of Duty movieAnnounced, director and writer attachedNames like Berg and Sheridan sound promising to me. My worry is tone: Call of Duty plays like a blockbuster, but modern war on screen asks harder questions than a campaign does.
• 6
  HaloNo new project announced in what I readA second try needs a reason, not just a famous name. After two seasons on Paramount+, whatever comes next has to feel like a reset, not a repeat.

What Xbox says vs. what I'm watching

What it means if you just play games

Short version: not much changes today. I found nothing in the XP announcement about Game Pass, console prices or release dates, and Sharma told staff consoles remain central, with the next-generation Project Helix described as a family of devices, per Notebookcheck. For the subscription side, see our Xbox Cloud Gaming breakdown.

If you like to track what comes next, the dated items I found are small: Angelidou-Smith starts at Mojang on Oct. 19, and the Minecraft theme park is slated for 2027. Everything else on the pipeline list has no date in the sources I read.

My verdict

Quick answers